“The fatal flaw of human wisdom is that it promises that you can change your relationships without needing to change yourself.” -Paul Tripp and Tim Lane
Tag Archives: repentance
Turning from Self to Christ, Necessary for Obedience
“We cannot will ourselves into the deep obedience that God requires. We can’t obey until we ourselves have received this grace and picked up our cross. We can’t obey until we have laid down our life, with all our false and worldly identities and idols. We can’t obey until we face the facts: the gospel comes in exchange for the life we once loved.” -Rosaria Butterfield, The Gospel Comes with a House Key
The Importance of Daily Confession
“Such confessing and forsaking, immediate and detailed, are required of every Christian. It is a question of honesty versus hypocrisy. The uncovering of sins is painful and
humiliating. It brings us to our knees in lowliness before God. But if we want to receive mercy, both forgiveness for the past and power for the future, there is no other way. Let it never be said of us that we take sin lightly or presume on the mercy of God.” -John Stott, Confess Your Sins
Confess Early, Confess Often
The apostle Paul affirmed before Felix: ‘I always take pains to have a clear conscience toward God and toward men’ (Acts 24: 16). We should have the same ambition. As soon as any sin is on our conscience, whether committed against God or men we must confess it. This is what it means to walk in the light’ (I Jn. 1: 7). It has been described as living in house without ceiling or walls permitting no barrier to arise between us and either God or our fellows. It is a very serious thing to tamper with our conscience or to let it remain burdened and unrelieved. As soon as we have sinned against our neighbour we should apologize. As soon as we
are conscious of God’s face having become clouded, so that we are estranged from Him, we need to get away quietly, to uncover our sin, to confess and forsake it. As Thomas
Becon, Archbishop Cranmer’s chaplain, put it: “This kind of confession ought every Christian man daily and hourly to make unto God, so oft as he is brought unto the know
ledge of his sin.” It is an indispensable condition of abiding continuously in Christ.” -John Stott, Confess Your Sins
Uncovering Sin
“The uncovering of sin is in itself of
little value; it must lead us to an attitude both of humility towards God and of hostility towards sin. ‘Ye that love the Lord hate evil’, or ‘the Lord loves those who hate evil! (Ps. 97: 10, A.V. and R.S.V.); and it is this holy hatred of evil which is promoted by the faithful, systematic uncovering and confession of our sins.” -John Stott, Confess Your Sins
Forsaking Sin
Forsaking sin means, “taking up towards sin an attitude of resolute antagonism.” -John Stott, Confess Your Sins
Sin as Self-Sovereignty
“The essence of sin is self-sovereignty. Repentance, therefore, isn’t simply feeling sorry for sin. It’s losing control—dying to the need to direct, defend, define, or do. It’s allowing the true King to reign at last.” -Duke Kwon
Repentance Is…
Surrender
“Now the proper good of a creature is to surrender itself to its Creator—to enact intellectually, volitionally, and emotionally, that relationship which is given in the mere fact of its being a creature. When it does so, it is good and happy.” -C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
Rebels
“We are not merely imperfect creatures who must be improved: we are, as Newman said, rebels who must lay down our arms.” -C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
A Pilgrim's Theology 